The Perks of Being a Time Traveler

You wouldn’t forget things. You wouldn’t lose things or people—that alone is enough for most folks. You would never have that gut-wrenching realization when you wake up in the morning of Oh My God he is really dead, having been blessed with a certain forgetting in your sleep. You would never know what “remembering” feels like, that feeling of a limb gone suddenly missing, without warning. You would never forget that book you stayed up to read three nights in a row, only to realize six months later that you don’t remember a single detail of it.

You would have an escape when all you wanted to do was close your eyes and slip into time and be part of the fabric of its wings. It would be like you finally knew what it meant to get somewhere.

My own time travel machine is a subtle bubble, fragile as a bird. When you climb inside, it takes you back to before you were born even, back to when you were just a thought that hadn’t been thought yet.

It takes you back to moments of your life, like the summer you spent in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania for a poetry fellowship at Bucknell University, when you read poems in a beautiful old church and ran naked through a football field at night with a bunch of other young “fellows.” Back to when you ran through cemeteries and green, green grass. It was July and humid and greener than you’d ever known green to be, and you ran because that was all you could do. It takes you back to these moments that, when you were in them the first time, you thought you were unhappy, but upon revisiting them again in your time machine, you realize that you could have never been unhappy running through green like that. How could you have been?

Unhappiness was invented along with the time machine, and it is a matter of belief when it comes to being able to enter either.

Upon revisiting moments in your time machine, you will realize that it was always better than it seemed, that you were never fat, and that you could write your tail off. This is a perk of being a time traveler.

When you close the door to the hatch and tell it to go back to 1983, you can see your father carving sticks in the backyard at a wooden picnic table and the plastic on the chairs in the kitchen and how they stick to people’s thighs in the summer.

You can take back all the things you ever said. You can un-say them. That is another perk of being a time traveler.

For example, if the last thing you ever said to your father was “I hate you” before he died, well, you can undo that. You just set the dial back a little farther, and then get out and plant your feet firmly on the brown carpet, your hands on either side of the doorjamb, and remain silent. Or, say I love you. Really, the choice is yours. Another huge perk of time travel.

You can go back to before you found out your baby was dying and either decide to not have a baby at all or to just go back to when he wasn’t so sick. To stay in the moment when he had a light in his eyes and could still move his body. Maybe you’d just stay there. You could, you know, with your time travel machine.

Any event that occurs in the universe has to involve both space and time. Gravity doesn’t just pull on space; it also pulls on time.

When we time travel, we actually bend gravity so we become light, sinewy things that don’t know what it means to be held down and that fly through space and back into the arms of people we thought we’d lost and grandparents we never even met. We can bend and alter and climb the walls of time, which is a huge perk of time travel.

There are also things to take into consideration, like getting stuck in a moment of time. Say you go back to that May in 1983 and decide you want to stay. Fine. You have that choice. You do. But remember, when you go back, you are also still here. Your body is still sitting on the train reading a book, is still doing a backbend, is still having dinner with your husband. Only part of you will be missing. Part of you will be stuck in 1983 eating pizza with your father as you drink wine with your husband. Your eyes will reflect this missing-ness. There will be an emptiness behind your eyes that, over time, will turn into a deadening.

Although you have mastered time travel, you cannot master being in two places at once. So really you must decide if the perks are great enough.

How badly you want to be there? How badly you want to be here?

Jennifer Pastiloff was recently featured on Good Morning America. She is a yoga teacher, writer, and advocate for children with special needs based in L.A. She is also the creator of Manifestation Yoga® and leads retreats and workshops all over the world. Jennifer is currently writing a book and has a popular daily blog called Manifestation Station. Find her on Facebook and Twitter and take one of her yoga classes online at Yogis Anonymous.

Jen will be leading a Manifestation Yoga® weekend retreat at Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health in the Berkshires, Massachusetts Feb 1-3, 2013.

Related to this on far too many levels. Just beautiful, but it definitely made me cry. Wow. Thank you.

http://www.facebook.com/jennyjenp Jennifer Pastiloff

Thank you @nmjensen:disqus

Eric Hollings

This is a bastion of an example of transcendent eloquence. Pastiloff does it AGAIN. Both hitting home and delivering with a poise & purpose that… just feels GOOD. Nice work! -Eric

http://www.facebook.com/jennyjenp Jennifer Pastiloff

Thank you. means a lot to me.

Chelle WriterYogi

Wow Jen. You really got me at the end. Where do you want to be more? Here or there? And looking at the past ansd see it wasnt so bad. You wernt fat and could write. Thanks for sharing. And your right you cant be two places at once. I struggle with this all the time. Xoxo

http://www.facebook.com/jennyjenp Jennifer Pastiloff

Thank you!!

http://www.facebook.com/rachyrachp Rachel Pastiloff

fantastic. OMG.

Peckinpah

Wow, such eloquence! Thank you Jennifer.

http://www.facebook.com/jennyjenp Jennifer Pastiloff

Thank you.

James Vincent Knowles

Pssssst… I have a time machine. It’s my heart with a wire connected to my imagination, powered by my soul & the generous kindness of others I know, past & present lovers & friends. I finally got it working. It defies gravity & it gathers light, as well. It has a fail-safe built in too, a refined device that takes me back to an delightfully happy time for every painful one I choose to see, where I learn about all sorts of great stuff about life & me. And it has a backup memory that takes me back here & now when i’m done. It let’s me feel stuff & allows me to understand why & sometimes laugh & sometimes cry. You see, it lets me feel both good & bad, which helps me see what matters most so I can choose. And the best part is that it gets better & better, this little machine, at helping me let go of the pain & hurt & worry & doubt & fear, so I can then see & feel what i desire is what’s guiding me in any & all directions it might go & is what helps me feel good now & here & still know I can remember just how valuable I really am, & grateful too, to all my friends.

http://www.facebook.com/jennyjenp Jennifer Pastiloff

I always want to print out your replies and tattoo them in my mind.

http://twitter.com/katiecanes Katie D

You use the same words I see and hear everyday, yet somehow when you put them together…they become magical. Tonight I will have a glass of wine, share a laugh with friends, and be HERE. Thank you, as always, for the inspiration.

“Any event that occurs in the universe has to involve both space and time. Gravity doesn’t just pull on space; it also pulls on time.”…”How badly you want to be there? How badly you want to be here?”

What a powerful notion your brilliant mind has created. The comforting image of time traveling into one’s memories. Simply remembering one’s life is as good as leaving this space, this time, this very moment in existence…and going backwards.

Regret is going backwards. It’s an emotion as worth feeling as is it is good taking four steps forward and five steps back. It’s a black and ugly emotion, it dreams color from faces and laughter from voice and gravity from the present moment. It takes your time. It sucks out the little precious “present moments” by enticing us, backwards, with its vivid memories. With its questions. With its tempting “photo album I’m dying to look through” quality and “if only I could have not needed to look” aftertaste. Thank you for the reminder that, by living in the past, by succumbing to regret, we are literally leaving the present time and space. We are doing our “now” and “here” an incredible disservice by letting the guilt of the past seduce us with the fancy garb of a time traveler.

http://www.facebook.com/jennyjenp Jennifer Pastiloff

Thank you for the reminder that, by living in the past, by succumbing to regret, we are literally leaving the present time and space.

Yes, so true.. thank you.. xx you are so eloquent.

BarbaraManuelPotter

Hmm. So very interesting. Especially can we really be in two places at the same time and what that might mean. Are you really living?

http://www.facebook.com/jennyjenp Jennifer Pastiloff

exactly.

Liz Bird

Your reminders of the power of presence are always so poignant! Thank you for sharing Jen, I am a huge fan!

http://www.facebook.com/jennyjenp Jennifer Pastiloff

Thank you Liz.

http://www.facebook.com/madisonrosner Madison Rosner

Fantastic! The balance that keeps us more in the now than looking back and dwelling on the past is powerful. I love the comparison to time travel, and how it is our choice to remain present and forward thinking rather than being stagnant in the past.

http://twitter.com/RadioSpencer Spencer Hughes

Jennifer, your pieces always inspire. As I time traveling buff, I particularly enjoyed this entry. Thanks so much for always inspiring us! Keep up the great work. Cheers, always!

http://www.facebook.com/rachyrachp Rachel Pastiloff

agreed

Jamalia32

Beautiful. A great piece to read today – to remember to be in the now, and to breathe before you say or do those things that have you wanting to go back in time to fix them…